Aline et Valcour Quotes

“We are no guiltier in following the primative impulses that govern us than is the Nile for her floods or the sea for her waves.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Tormented virtue fidgets while vice takes its repose.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Great heavens! If young people starting out in the world had any inkling of the suffering that awaited them, given the opportunity to return to nothingness, would anyone be left to set out upon life's journey!”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“   My dearest, we must stop seeing one another.
   There they are—cruel words. I put them down without dying. Follow me bravely. My father spoke as the master who demands to be obeyed. A convenient match appears, and that suffices. He didn't ask if I agreed but took into account only his own interests, wholly sacrificing my feelings to his caprices. Don't implicate my mother—she said and did all she could, and imagines doing still more. You know how much she loves me and you must be aware of her tender feelings for you. Our tears flowed together. The barbarian witnessed them but was not moved.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Monsieur de Blamont: "Depravity is merely theoretical. Whether it's a real misdeed depends upon the husband and becomes a null issue once he tolerates or denies it. If he opposes nothing—subject to certain purely physical provisions—what can be the wife's crime?”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“This terrible truth shows us the awful necessity of evil on earth and demonstrates that lesser evils check greater ones, much as bothersome insects lead a useful existence that keeps us from being troubled by the more venomous.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Sacrificed young to a husband who pleased me not and whom I hardly knew, I nevertheless intended from the depths of my soul the most rigorous allegiance. God knows I never transgressed. I saw my solicitude repaid by harshness, my attentions by brusqueness, my fidelity by crimes, my submission by horrors.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“...we mislead, but sweetly.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Cette force irrésistible de la main du sort qui nous porte toujours malgré nous où ses loix veulent que nous soyons”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Man's greatest fault is to buttress his vices with doctrines that, once elaborated, serve to legitimize his conduct; everything that would be condemned in the heart of another will be forever engraved in his own. That's why a young man's wrongdoings are insignificant: he betrays principles but returns to them. An older man sins only after reflection; his faults emanate from his philosophy, which foments and nourishes them by erecting principles on the debris of his childish morality. And in these inflexible so-called principles he discovers the laws of his depravity.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Who cares whose head be blasted when we must procure so-called evidence? A thousand victims to discover one who's guilty. That's the spirit of the law.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour

“Were the indelicate Dolbourg to succeed thanks to the President's diabolic machinations, he would have one of Madame de Blamont's daughters as his mistress and the other as his wife.”
― Marquis de Sade, Aline et Valcour